Games Lab Techs Play

It was just the other day that I introduced my girlfriend to the delights of a game that I hadn't played in a while, one that a group of us nerdly types invented while working at LensCrafters a few years back.

In the year 2000, not long after The Mall of Georgia had opened its doors, with a brand new state-of-the-art (right! All the equipment in the lab was refurbished Coburns, the generator was an archaic 113 - oh, there I go being nerdly again) LC in it, I, being an LMIT, a Lab-Manager-In-Training, was sent from my cosy little store in podunk Gainesville to the bright lights and big city of Buford, where the South's biggest Mall was, and still is, located. The idea, of course, was that I was going to be trained further there and eventually run the place. In those early days before a lot of people knew that the mall was actually there we were quite slow from time to time and had a lot of down-time, during which we lab types and frame stylists and opticians would play word games and such with each other in order to keep our brains from turning to mush. Now, of course, if Tim Ladina or Jorge Zarragoitia is reading this - this never happened! We worked constantly! If ya got time to lean, ya got time to clean! etc. (Tim and Jorge were my boss and his boss respectively.)

One of the games we invented was called the music game. Not the snappiest of titles, I grant you, but it described the game perfectly.The way the game was played was this: One person thinks of the name of a band, artist, singist, chanteuse, whatever, and says it. The next person has to think of another artist whose name begins with the last letter of the name of the artist the first person thought of. They then say it, and the game continues. Believe me, you can make this game last a looong time.

When that game got old, we would play the movie game. Again, we weren't good at making up game names, but the ones we came up with did the job. In the movie game, one thinks of a movie and its cast. If you are the sort of person who doesn't remember the names of actors too well, this is not really the game for you.

So, you've thought of a movie, and two or three cast members. You say the actors' names out loud and everyone else has to guess the movie. Once a person has guessed correctly, they then have to think of another movie that that cast member has been in, and say the cast names of that movie, so the sequence continues.
Believe me, I'm a bit of a film buff, and so I can really dredge 'em up. As you might imagine, that was a good way of killing an hour or two. (Not really Tim - we were working hard the whole time! Sweating bullets! Cranking out that high quality eyewear in about an hour!)

So anyway, I recently introduced my girlfriend to these games. I'm not sure she's really into it, but I'm trying. Boy, we sure know how to have fun, don't we?

I love games like these that are invented and kinda personal. Not only are they fun to play but it helps to keep some good memories alive, and by sharing the game with others it helps to tell a story or two. At my time of life (mid-40's) nostalgia is becoming more and more of a daily issue. I'm sure my peers all understand where I'm coming from on this - well, most of them anyway.

Who's up for a game?